


One Last Lesson

by ActualHurry



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Daddy Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24330172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActualHurry/pseuds/ActualHurry
Summary: Yor has one more gift for Shin before the end.
Relationships: Jaren Ward/Dredgen Yor, Shin Malphur & Dredgen Yor
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65





	One Last Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> The Jaren/Yor stuff is past tense because he's DEFINITELY dead. Sorry for getting your hopes up. Also don't think too hard about this fic because I sure didn't! Half of this I wrote while Agent was visiting me; the other half of it I wrote during a vaccine-induced fever. Related: please stay up to date on your vaccines! That's important.
> 
> Originally "daddy issues" tag was going to be "Ascendant Realm vent sesh with the guy who killed your dad and is also kind of your dad by extension of what you think of as a dad" but apparently that's too long so daddy issues it is
> 
> Anyway, none of this is beta'd so if there's a mistake or something reads wrong or whatever, that's on me, you caught ME slipping. But don't tell me if I left a typo or anything because I'll cry

They stand silently, the sun high.

Seconds pass. Hours, it feels like. Where the heat bears down on Shin like something physical, for Yor it seems that gravity itself holds no power over him, that he’s only playing by the rules of the world because it’s more work not to.

Like he’s only let Shin find him because he wanted to be found. Like this isn’t a bitter end at all, but a welcome conclusion.

Shin’s wanted this for so long, and now he’s here, and he wants what comes next so badly that it could set him on fire.

“Been awhile.”

That voice is as familiar as the dirt under Shin’s boots, as the feeling of the cannon against his thumb. It feels like if he reaches up now and rubs his face, ash will rub off his cheek and snot will smear off his nose. Like yesterday, except that Palamon was years and years ago, and Shin’s got a gun and no more mercy to keep him warm.

Yor’s the reason he’s still kicking. Yor’s the reason he hates. Yor’s the reason he’s got any kind of direction.

“The gunslinger’s sword…his cannon.” Yor’s worn cape flaps in the wind like black wings spread out behind him, his silhouette ringed by the dark tatters. “That was a gift.”

Shin knows that. He knows it like he knows that he needs only one bullet. Doesn’t matter where it strikes. His head? His chest? His arm, his hand, his wicked piece?

Just the one. That’s all he needs.

“An offering,” Yor continues. “From me, to you.”

The sun keeps its watch. So does Shin.

“Nothing to say? I’ve been waiting for you. For this day.”

Shin swallows his venom. One damn bullet. _One_.

Yor tilts his head and takes a step closer. “But I have one more gift for you.”

One bullet’s all he needs, Shin thinks for what must be the hundredth time. He doesn’t move, but he tips his chin higher. Don’t balk. Don’t back down. Don’t show anything at all, keep a poker face, and he remembers: his Light burns brighter. He’s made sure of it.

“You haven’t faltered.” Yor takes another step. “You haven’t given up.” Closer. “You’ve stoked your fire.” Shin’s fingers twitch to his gun. “Jaren would be proud.”

The name alone cuts him like a knife but Shin’s bled all his misery already. He’s shed his tears. He’s let himself feel the loss and he’s come out in one piece again. This is no time to feel the pain ripple out from the mention of the dead, no more, yet Shin still feels it anyway.

Yor’s close enough that Shin can make out every detail on his face now. He memorizes the dark brows and the shadowed eyes. The cut of his jaw, the line of his lips.

It’s all going into the fire anyway.

“ _I_ am proud,” Yor says.

Shin draws.

Fire leaps down his arm like it’s the driest tinder, molten-hot, burning bright with one singular purpose. He raises the gun, as right and as real in his grip as ever, _Jaren, Jaren, Jaren_ , and he pulls the trigger.

The flames stop as if snuffed out by grip alone as Yor snatches his wrist. Shin’s eyes go wide.

There is no bullet in the chamber when there’s no fire to get there. The world closes in like a nightmare. Yor’s not even smiling, he’s just looking at him with some soft, knowing _wonder_ , and Shin —

Shin figures, _okay_ , and punches him in the jaw.

Yor’s head snaps to the side and he blinks as if he’s been surprised. Shin’s pleased, even if only for a second, from that. Smoke wisps off of that singular point of contact on Yor’s face and trails from Shin’s knuckles; it may not have been a bullet, but at least it was a spark.

Shin wrenches his arm free of Yor’s cold grasp and he aims The Last Word again, only for Yor’s knee to dig so hard and fast into his gut that he crumples, gasping.

“Don’t mistake me,” Yor says, and Shin gazes up at him just in time to see him dab blood from the corner of his mouth, “I’m still proud.” 

Another attempt to shoot. Yor grabs The Last Word and Shin sets it blazing so hot that there’s no possible way it doesn’t melt his glove.

If it fazes Yor, he doesn’t show it. He only takes hold of the back of Shin’s cloak while he’s still half-kneeling, winds it twice around his fist, and _pulls_. Scruffed, Shin gives away a strangled sound, reeling back, but Yor only shakes him hard, jostles him dizzy.

“Drop it,” Yor says, calm as ever.

Shin can smell burning leather. His head is spinning. He does not drop the gun. He hangs onto it even tighter, and a trigger pull bursts a flaming bullet right into the ground beside Yor’s boot. Yor shakes him again and Shin chokes, but he doesn’t drop the gun, won’t, can’t. His arm strains with the strength he puts into trying to aim the barrel at Yor, but Yor doesn’t even look as if he’s trying to hold it away from himself.

He looks — and Shin has to stare, wide-eyed and stunned, to make sure he’s seeing it right, because…Yor looks mildly _bothered_.

Shin feels something in himself snap clean in two.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to _go_ ,” he manages, his voice a rasp with how much pressure sits at his throat. He coughs, trying to pull away again, but Yor only raises those dark brows of his and _looks_.

“But this is how it’s going,” Yor says. “So it is the only way it could ever go.”

Shin kicks a leg out. His boot-tip barely makes contact with Yor’s ankle and does nothing.

“One last lesson,” Yor says to him. “Then freedom. Then revenge.”

He reels Shin in suddenly and for one moment, one singular pendulum swing of a _moment_ , they’re staring right at each other, down to their very intent, eyes on eyes and noses nearly touching (Shin can feel the Darkness on him, he smells like marrow and bone, it dries his mouth out) — then Yor flings Shin back, lets him go.

Shin expects to stumble and find his back flat to the dry ground of Dwindler’s Ridge. He expects to land hard there, to scramble back up and fire that final, fatal shot at the man that’s cost him everything and his pride now, too.

None of this follows. What follows is nothing.

Completely nothing. Shin falls into emptiness, a ring of light surrounding a portal that comes in through his peripheral and eats him alive, leaving only darkness and the sight of Yor staring down after him through that tear in the world.

The fury in his lungs rips a shout from him, but the landing knocks it right out.

The void wasteland stretches on endlessly. The sky is a wide, yawning pit of nothing. Shin has felt the burning sting of Martian sand cutting his skin in swathes of bitter air. He’s been close enough to the sun that his flesh feels as if it could bleed off of him. Now, the silence bears down like a smothering blanket, and the cold seeps into his bones. The ache of an existence or nonexistence or maybe something impossibly in between stirs a shivering ache through the core of him, makes him retch until he’s coughing half-dried chunks of blood out of himself.

The Last Word remains in his fervent grip. It’s the only thing he’s never let go. Right now, the metal is as chilly as the air around him. He reaches for his Light; it doesn’t reach back.

When Shin finally manages to get to his knees, he feels something — someone — yanks him upwards by the cloak. Shin aims a swing backwards, his elbow colliding with a firm chest, and he expects a slap, a punch at least, in response.

He gets a cuff to the back of the head and two hands patting the dirt and dust off of his armor while he’s stunned.

“Your close range could use some work,” Yor informs him.

He steps around to Shin’s front, holding him in place so Shin doesn’t keel over like the wounded animal he is. Shin glares, tries for another swing, but it’s like fighting back in a dream; he’s slow, running underwater, pushing through molasses. Yor sidesteps the blow and catches Shin’s jaw between his fingers. He squishes Shin’s cheeks between forefinger and thumb and says, wry, “You can do better than that.”

Shin narrows his eyes and spits blood at him. Yor jerks back, his face now speckled red, and Shin decides that even though it’s petty vengeance, it’s still vengeance.

Yor exhales in a way that might very well count as a sigh. 

Shin doesn’t expect Yor to wipe his face off with little more than a smirk. He doesn’t expect Yor to wipe his hand off on his own cloak and then reach out to thumb away the blood on Shin’s lip for him. He doesn’t expect Yor to take one, two, three steps back and sit down on a rock that Shin had mistaken for a shadow earlier.

“Did you get it all out of your system?” Yor says airily. 

Shin swallows iron and blinks stupidly until Yor raises his eyebrows and gestures to the rocky, cold ground. “What did I tell you?” Yor adds. “One last lesson. Sit.” 

For lack of anything else in the world to do, Shin sits down.

“Good, good. Now let’s see…” 

Yor starts by telling him about Rezyl Azzir. He tells him he was a good man, a strong man, a hero the likes of which have never been seen before. Shin knows this story, because he knows the ending already. Yor knows that too, judging by the sharp tint to his gaze as he speaks. Yor talks about heroism and Light and fighting and fighting and _fighting_ , endless fighting. He talks about arrogance, about ego, and about the eventual, certain fall. He talks about how no good man can stay all good, not when the weight of the world’s on his back, and just one pebble more can send them crumbling.

Yor’s eyes go distant when he speaks of Jaren, afterwards. Shin knows this ending too, knows it as well as the gun in his grip. Yor talks about meeting him. About knowing him. And his voice tilts funny, softer, _stranger_ , and he goes all sentimental for even just one heartbeat when the talk swerves from Jaren to _love_ —

“Why’d you turn into his pebble?” Shin interrupts, nape burning.

Yor blinks as if he’s coming out of a daze. “What?” 

“No good man can stay all good, and if they’ve got all that weight, it takes a single pebble. That’s what you said.” Shin’s aware he’s raising his voice. Shin’s aware of the anger forming like a hot stone in the pit of his stomach, boiling his blood. He can do nothing about any of it, and even more: he _wants_ it. He steels his voice and finishes through his teeth, “Why become his pebble?” 

In the time that follows, there is only silence to pour down on the both of them. There could be miles between them, there could be mere inches, there could be nothing at all. Yor leans back almost imperceptibly, and Shin glares up at him like if Yor were to extend a hand to feed, he would snap his teeth shut on his fingers.

Then Yor smiles and says, “Why else? For the most important person in the world.”

Shin stands like he’s been shocked. His hand is cracked dry and burned under the melted, broken leather of his glove. The Last Word is hot in his hand.

“For the one to be better than us both.”

Shin thinks, _No._

“For you.”

The rage is swept out of Shin and the void that’s left behind seeks only to be filled. He swallows around it. Barely over a whisper, he says, “I don’t understand.”

“Jaren and I were two halves of a whole,” Yor murmurs, and now he sounds so damn fond, of all things. “He taught you right and wrong. And all the simple things, too. How to shoot like he did. How to hunt like he did. Haven’t I taught you all the same?” 

“No.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Yor insists, leaning forward so quickly that Shin nearly stumbles backwards thinking he’ll leap at him; but no, no. Nothing quite so violent; something violent would be easier. “Who have you hunted? _Me._ Who have you pictured shooting with every pull of your trigger? _Me._ So tell me, boy, _who has taught you more?_ ”

A shot rings muted, the sound of the bullet swallowed up by the inky dark of this non-space. Yor jerks back, slapping over his shoulder where the shot connected. Shin holds The Last Word steady as the end of the barrel wisps. It may not be fire and fire alone, but his shot was true: when Yor takes his hand off of his shoulder, Shin can see the wet red there on his palm.

“I’m sorry,” Yor says, slowly, so slowly, his apology clipped and sticky like the words are coming from lips that want to laugh. “I’m sorry. You’re right. To call you a boy is an insult. You’re a man now. As I said before: A better man.” 

Except that Shin feels like a teenager all over again. Embracing this, he wonders if spitting on Yor again will cause him to become so wrathful that he throws Shin out into the empty space to fall forever. The only consolation with this idea is knowing that the last thing Shin did would be dragging Yor right down with him.

Yet somehow, all Shin can think to say is, “If you loved him, you wouldn’t have killed him.” 

Yor, flicking blood off of his fingertips, pauses. Then: “He had a greater purpose than being loved by me.” 

“Like dying?”

“Dying for _you_ ,” says Yor, very gently. It’s crueler that way. Shin’s traitorous lip wobbles. “We wanted the best for you. Both of us did.” 

Shin pulls the trigger three more times, scattering holes across Yor’s chest, _1-2-3_. Despite the blood trickling from the corner of Yor’s mouth, he doesn’t seem hurt in the least when he coughs politely into his fist.

Only then does Shin allow his heavy, tired arm to finally drop. The Last Word rests against his thigh. Its weight is no longer comfortable.

Yor gets to his feet, seemingly unbothered by these extra wounds. As he rolls out his shoulders, he says, “Aren’t you going to ask?”

Too many questions float sluggishly through the mire of Shin’s thoughts. He can barely keep them straight, let alone bother figuring out which to pin down and speak. _Why? Why me? Why him? Why_ you _? Do you love me, too?_

Instead, Shin only takes a short, small breath, and shakes his head.

“I made you angry earlier, didn’t I?” Yor asks suddenly. He sounds genuinely curious.

Shin stares at him. Yor stares back patiently, and that icy steel overtakes Shin one more time. “Fuck you,” he says, chilly. 

Yor laughs. “Good,” he says, and he _laughs_.

Shin would think harder about that, if Yor’s laughter wasn’t the kindest thing about him yet, if his amusement didn’t sound so very human, nearly the same way Jaren once had laughed, back when Shin had shot every target right through the bullseye for the first time. Shin blinks, remembering the way Jaren had ruffled his hair afterwards, and for a second — for just a second, as Yor surges forward in one smooth motion to scoop Shin up into his firm hold, Shin can’t be sure if he’s only remembering or if it really, truly happens, if Yor’s touch sinks into his mussed, dirty hair, and _pets_ him.

For one dazzling, singular second, Shin’s sure he must mistake it, that it can’t be Yor’s thumb brushing across his brow to push some wayward hair away from his eyes, just like Jaren did once.

Then another portal swallows open, and as Yor steps through with Shin held against him, the dark creeps in to suck all the life away, cold dripping into Shin’s eyes and down his throat. Shin doesn’t even have a chance to shout. He opens his mouth and chokes on it. In a flash, they’re out on the other side again, the world gasping back to life and color around them. It’s so bright. Shin feels like his head’s being pinched, vision throttled with the sudden burst of sunlight that rains down on them.

“Now,” Yor says, dropping Shin unceremoniously onto the grass and heading right back up to his spot on the hill of Dwindler’s Ridge. “Where were we?”

Shin feels that ghost of Jaren’s pride all over him, like he’s somehow put on the wrong skin today.

They take their places again. Shin’s mouth tastes like ash and rot. There’s still flecks of dried blood on his chin, just in case he gets any ideas to pretend none of it happened.

A single word flits through his mind like the pop of a static touch, like a whisper and a wail, fading: _goodbye._

When Yor falls, he falls with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading <3


End file.
